In view of the rapid increase of the amount of electronic waste (e-waste) worldwide, recycling of printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) scrap is very important in terms of environmental protection, material recovery, etc.
A printed circuit board assembly normally comprises many different types of electronic components, for example resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, transistors, ICs, etc. mounted on a substrate. The different components are mounted on the substrate either via surface mount technology (SMT) or through-hole technology (THT).
The different components have different lifetimes as well as various compositions. Some of the components could be re-used or contain materials of interest for re-use that are lost in a common recycling process due to intermixing with incompatible materials, while others need to be recycled, and still others pose a considerable environmental hazard that must be dealt with.
In current common recycling processes for printed circuit board assemblies the printed circuit board assembly is melted, (possibly with other materials) to separate valuable metals, which implies that all materials are intermixed. However, this results in the materials making up the electronic components being mixed, which makes it impossible to re-use components or completely recycle the different materials within the components.
Consequently, there is a need for a printed circuit board assembly, and a method of assembling such a printed circuit board assembly, which makes it easy to separate and collect various electronic components mounted on the printed circuit board assembly at the end of its useful life, and which further facilitates re-use of electronic components and/or recycling of the constituting materials of the electronic waste material.